Why Church Leaders Act Like Cowards
The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times. – J. C. Ryle
Idolatry, Folly, and the Natural Mind
Every age of the church has people happy to stay ignorant. They will sit by their firesides, or these days in front of their screens, unwilling to bother with careful Christian thinking about culture and what that would actually require of them as believers in the world.
Today’s Western church is generally either paralysed by pietistic retreatism and cultural disengagement, or misled by unthinking enthusiasts. The latter – ‘influencers,’ agitators and activists, loud and sweeping in opinion, are the alleged victims of past generations and are ready to act as judge, jury, and executioner. They are like revolutionaries with metaphorical guillotines, attempting the impossible, like liberating a triangle from its three sides
They rush off without careful thought to ‘change the world’, desperate to get a selfie of themselves conquering Mount Everest without knowing where it is on the map. They are ready to sternly excoriate the pastor for his privilege, alleged phobias and participation in the patriarchy before listening to his sermons or being able to find Zephaniah in the Bible, never mind quote anything from this minor prophet.
As such, it is not an easy task to persuade believers to think carefully, studying the times in service to Christ. It is harder still to make the kind of Christian thought which doesn’t care about self-justifying cliches - so popular in our woke culture - appealing. Yet these ideas attack the very root of human nature, and from there go on to touch all of life, like ripples on a lake.
The self-justifying ideology that dominates society today, with its shameless moral posturing – the jiggery-wokery of the West – is especially difficult to deal with because it is a form of stupidity which is less self-aware than rank evil and is no respecter of persons. It seems immune to reasoning and inconvenient truths. Intellectuals, scholars, political elites, and journalists are frequently afflicted with this brand of stupidity – indeed more so than ordinary working people, who are practically forced to consume their vacuous messaging in every form of media. Stupidity is a peculiarly human condition that arises, not because of a lack of intellectual capacity, but because of a herd mentality formed around powerful propaganda – a collective stupidity. It is the abstraction Kierkegaard railed against – public opinion:
The public is a kind of colossal something, an abstract void and vacuum that is all and nothing…the most dangerous of all powers and the most meaningless…Now everyone can have an opinion, but there must be a lumping together numerically in order to have it. Twenty-five signatures to the silliest notion is an opinion. (1)
What comes out of such public opinion is collective stupidity. This sociological phenomenon undermines the basic human capability to think for themselves. Whether they are fully aware of it or not, they are prepared to renounce almost anything at all, in order to adapt their behaviour to the ideology of the day.
In the early 1940s the noted Christian martyr in Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had time to reflect whilst languishing in prison, on how and why the highly educated German people had become afflicted with collective ideological stupidity. His comments are startlingly reflective of our own cultural moment:
The fact that stupid people are often stubborn should not hide the fact that they are not independent. When talking to him, one feels that one is not dealing with him personally, but with catchphrases, slogans, etc. that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell; he is blinded; he is abused in his own being. Having become an instrument without an independent will, the fool will also be capable of all evil, and at the same time, unable to recognize it as evil…But it is also quite clear here that it is not an act of instruction, but only an act of liberation that can overcome stupidity… The Bible states that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Thus, the inner liberation of man begins by living responsibly before God. Only then may stupidity be overcome. (2)
Transforming the Mind
What we need in the West is the freedom that comes from Christ, and the recovery of the Christian mind - the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). This leads to distinctly Christian action. Mere political and sociological arguments are not enough because this collective stupidity is an abstraction, a slogan, that people can’t simply be reasoned out of. Freedom needs to come from the outside, which then leads to recovery of inner independence when people meet the truth.
So what is the Christian mind? And where do we begin in the study of our time? From the standpoint of scriptural revelation, truly Christian thinking must be concerned first and foremost with Jesus Christ, being His disciple, and having His Word dwell and abide in us by His Spirit. But submitting oneself to being a humble follower does not come easily to anyone.
Humans always prefer to be autonomous, living the illusion that we can make our own laws like kings without a country. Being a churchgoing Christian doesn’t remove the temptation or inclination to strike out alone and follow our own desires, living by our own priorities, thereby setting to one side the awesome and all-consuming call to be a disciple of Christ; to come and die in order to truly live. Yet this is precisely what Christ calls us to. Being a ‘living sacrifice’ sounds excruciating and involves a transformation of the mind, which implies the pain and suffering of being rejected by a world conformed to a different spirit. We must be reborn, transformed and given a new heart, a new mind.
We may claim to follow Christ, but the lifelong challenge in developing a truly Christian mindset requires regularly asking ourselves if we have followed him far enough? Have we been to Jordan and seen the dove descending, but hung back from the mountain to avoid His exposition of the law, and His radical insistence that only those who teach that law can be great in the Kingdom? Have we fallen asleep in pious satisfaction at the gates of Gethsemane, or lingered from a safe distance at Golgotha, never making it to the slopes of Olivet or to the Upper Room in Jerusalem with the dancing flames of fire? Is it possible that we are not yet Christian enough? It is all too easy to follow Christ only as far as is convenient, till the tarrying is just too tiring. If we are unwilling to stand under Christ’s Lordship in all of life, then we are uninvolved in key aspects of the drama and miss the significance of God’s full act in history.
We must acknowledge every part of Christ and all of His work if we want to be truly transformed by the renewing of our minds. It is not sufficient to only appreciate Him washing Peter’s feet at the Last Supper as a model of service if we ignore Him as Stephen saw Him, exalted in heavenly places, standing up from his seat of total authority at God’s right hand. We must see Him as priest on the road to Calvary, but also on the footpath to Emmaus as resurrected Lord if we are to truly follow Him and have our minds renewed.
In a hostile context, the temptation is to follow Him just as far as culture permits. When the storm rises and dread grips us is precisely the time we are called to step out of the boat and walk upon the Word – despite the wind and waves of the world’s antagonism. We must not suddenly become hard of hearing. Indeed, if we will not hear that Word over the clamour of idolatry, we certainly cannot speak it. If our cultural moment is allowed to determine how far we follow Christ, then we cannot follow him at all. Like the crowds in Jerusalem, we may perhaps hear ‘Hosannas’ from a distance, but we won’t be found stammering with the formerly doubting Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” We might find ourselves standing near the cross of Jesus as a ‘martyr’, but never see Him ascend to the seat of total authority with the ruler of the kings of the earth.
The sad endpoint of hearing and heeding God’s word only as far as our culture will permit is first an unwillingness, and then a tragic inability to speak the whole counsel of God as faithful prophets. Christ was both priest and prophet, and was hated for it. He knew the opposition of the world, and He warned that the spirit at work in the children of disobedience would naturally hate his followers also.
But we cannot follow our prophet nor share in his sufferings if we refuse to prophesy.
Many contemporary priests would rather predict with Balaam to preserve their living than stand with Elijah against Baal. Certainly that donkey spoke with more wisdom than many English bishops in recent years – hirelings who would flog the meekest of God’s prophets if they could for hindering their progress in destroying the church. Their words sound good but lack true substance, and they deceive and flatter themselves that their goal is unity when, in reality, it is revolt. Like powdered-wig courtiers fighting over who will fetch the king's chamber pot, much of the Western church’s leadership, even amongst evangelicals, simply courts the culture – ingratiating themselves with the influential, the powerful, the professors, even senior clergy who have whored themselves to the spirit of the world. Largely in the name of scholarliness they are avidly committed to half-measures, truth to a certain degree.
The moment that God’s people call a truce and reach a settlement with the spirit of the world, the mindset of the age, is the moment they set aside the Christian mind and overturn true Christianity. The kingdom of God is indeed in this world, but not of it; it is surely present here, but it is not from here – its power, authority and mandate derive from a transcendent source.
This side of Christ’s return, the church is always the church militant not yet fully triumphant. The struggle will continue over our graves till the king comes who will open all graves. We are called to victory but not to peaceful collaboration. It is only where the battle is fiercest that the fealty of Christ’s soldiers is proved. To desert the frontline but deny cowardice and disloyalty because you once served up beans in the officer’s mess is to lie to oneself.
When God’s people say ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace, and sign a treaty with a rebellious world, it pretends to be the church triumphant. It acts like the struggle against lawlessness and spiritual darkness is complete – but before the consummation of Christ.
But declaring an armistice with sin or striking a deal with the godless state is not a victory nor faithfulness to God’s kingdom. If the church acquiesces to blessing homosexual relationships to make peace with the culture, like the Church of England’s Synod, or meekly surrenders Christ’s authority over public worship, assembly and sacraments to the state, like many Christian leaders during the Covid-19 debacle, defeats are being dressed up like victories.
It is a tragic irony that those who preach righteousness and hope for history through following Christ to the uttermost, bringing them into direct conflict with the world on the frontlines of battle, are charged with ‘triumphalism,’ whilst popular collaborators who claim neutrality with the world, making a compact of surrender or privatization to the applause of culture, are thought pious and realistic. In reality they are the triumphalists. They seek to ‘immanentize a false eschaton’ – to act as though Christ has returned – by removing the faith from the affairs of daily life and coating what remains in honey so as to avoid any bitter taste in society’s mouth. Because after all, a church no longer at war is a church triumphant. Right?
This compromised situation is one Christians should be ashamed of. Today’s unthinking Christianity, harmonized with the world, humiliates itself, and like an old man dressed like a teenager, it becomes an object of ridicule. Accommodating the Christian mind to society's whims reduces the priceless bread of life to play dough, molded to superficial preferences. Worse, those willing to sit quietly by in pious self-satisfaction amidst a failing church and culture, refusing to either understand or respond with faith and courage to the times in which they live, are traitors to the cause of the king. Our age requires men of Issachar, not cowards who, bringing counsels of despair, head for home and hearth because they saw giants in Jericho.
What kind of Christian will you be?
Footnotes
(1) Kierkegaard, Two Ages, 93, 106.
(2) Bonhoeffer, Dietrich.“Von der Dummheit”: Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft. S. 17–20. Muenchen, Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1951.